seem to mind at all what happened to kind Mrs. Royle. It was Boggley, and only Boggley, that mattered to me. Of course nothing did happen to anyone. It isn't when one expects and dreads it that tragedy comes. Tragedy comes quietly, swiftly. I remember going to see a fisherman's widow in a little village on the stormy east coast. She told me of her husband's death. "I had his tea a' ready an' a bit buttered toast an' a kipper, but he never cam' in." That was all—"He never cam' in."
When our wanderers returned they were rather amused than otherwise. The horse had given trouble and ended by kicking the trap to pieces, and they had to walk part of the way home. Quite simple, you see; but the first opportunity I looked in a mirror to see if my hair had not turned white in a single night, as men's have done through sudden fear. It hadn't; but I did dream of a water-horse with "an awful starin' white face."
This morning Mrs. Royle took me to the village to get some brass to take home. The shop was a little hut with an earthen floor, a pair of scales, and one shelf crowded with brass things, made, not for the European market, but for the daily use of the people, such as drinking-vessels—lota is the pretty
